On Yom HaShoah, a student can still hear a Holocaust survivor, hear the words Auschwitz, 6 million and still not understand what was lost or why it matters. This is a failure of education. As there are only a limited number of Holocaust survivors still alive, we will gather, light candles and speak about remembrance. But we should also ask a harder question: what, exactly, are we teaching, and who is deciding how it is taught?  But the harder truth is this if so many people misunderstand the Holocaust, the failure is not only theirs, it is ours.

Despite decades of investment, conferences and institutional visibility, Holocaust education and Jewish responses to antisemitism reveal a systemic failure, both educationally and morally. Across organizations in North America, too many of those responsible for shaping Holocaust education are not equipped to teach it. They lack the content knowledge and the pedagogical foundation required to present it to students in a meaningful way. Yet they are often the ones making the decisions.

Holocaust education is too frequently shaped not by trained educators or scholars, but by donors, institutional leaders and networks of influence. In many cases, authority is assumed through proximity. being a descendant of survivors, a communal leader or a financial supporter, rather than through demonstrated expertise in teaching and learning. Emotion is elevated over pedagogy and empathy is treated as a substitute for education. This didn’t happen by accident. It reflects how we’ve allowed the Holocaust to be taught and presented.  

In my own work, I have encountered self-proclaimed Holocaust educators affiliated with major memorials and museums who could not clearly define the word “genocide,” or who presented historically inaccurate information to the public. I have also met individuals who, after reading People Love Dead Jews, believed that this alone made them qualified to speak with authority on Holocaust education. These are not isolated lapses. They point to a deeper failure to establish who is qualified to teach the Holocaust and who is not. The result is a system in which remembrance replaces instruction, and moral performance replaces moral literacy.

This distinction matters now more than ever. Amid rising global antisemitism and recent violent attacks in the United States and abroad, institutions often default to a memorial-first response and prioritizing symbolic gestures over the harder work of education. Holocaust memory becomes visible and emotionally powerful, but often detached from historical depth and pedagogical clarity. One recent example illustrates the stakes. A Holocaust memorial in Florida chose to engrave the names of victims of the October 7 Hamas attacks alongside those of Holocaust victims. October 7 marks a horrific moment in modern Jewish history. Merging it physically and symbolically with the Holocaust collapses distinct histories into a single narrative and risks obscuring both. Holocaust memorials were never intended to function only as spaces of mourning. They were built as warnings about the dangers of intolerance, indifference and moral failure. As Elie Wiesel wrote, “the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference.” That warning depends on clarity, not conflation. The timing of remembrance also matters. Memorialization should not be a race. Holocaust memory should never be reduced to being first.

There are also consequences for education. Public schools are already cautious when addressing Israel, antisemitism and genocide. In a polarized climate, when a Holocaust memorial is perceived as a site of contemporary political meaning rather than historical study, educators may hesitate to bring students at all. The issue is not whether institutions care. It is whether they are prepared to teach. Memorials can teach, but they cannot replace education. Teaching requires content knowledge, pedagogical skill and the ability to translate complex history for a new generation. Without that, remembrance becomes repetitive without understanding.

On Yom HaShoah, as the generation of survivors disappears, the responsibility shifts fully to those who teach. If Holocaust education continues to be shaped by influence rather than expertise, by symbolism rather than scholarship, then its meaning will erode. The Holocaust was not only a tragedy to be remembered. It was a warning to be understood. If we fail to teach it with clarity and discipline, remembrance itself risks becoming another form of forgetting. The problem is not simply that people misunderstand the Holocaust. It is that leaders, and too many self-proclaimed educators, some with only minimal knowledge and or brief exposure, have allowed it to be misunderstood.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)